Linux IQ Test

The free OS runs on your phone, your netbook, your desktop, and even your alarm clock. You named your dog Linus and you have Tux wallpaper. Andrew Morton signed your underwear. But how much do you really know about the most pervasive open source project on the planet? Core files, httpd service checks, determining the architecture of a Linux box from the shell — take the Linux IQ Test: Round 2 and find out.

This is far better than the last one, but it certainly contains a strange mixture of questions.

Why would a Linux user know or care the name of some specific theme that makes Linux look like XP? If I had to pick one I’d have gone with XPde, which is no longer maintained but which managed this quite well. The fact is that there are and have been a *lot* of theme projects for doing this kind of thing and knowing their names really isn’t important or especially Linuxy.

I like that the list of answers for creating sequential numbers included jot, which is what you’d use on freebsd, and I like that there was a question about comm(1) because it’s far too little known, but I question the relevance. How many people (besides me) really memorize names of esoteric command line tools? The question about sed was far more appropriate.

Certain trivia, like the YUM acronym, is appropriate, but again this is more of a “How old are you?” question than anything pertaining to Linux. Same thing goes for the “All software sucks” quote; if you were there at the time you probably remember, if you weren’t that doesn’t mean anything about your Linux knowledge. I’d tentatively say that the “Last version of Red Hat” question also falls in to this category.

As others have mentioned, knowing distro-specific commands like “How you control apache on SuSE 10” is stupid. Is this a Linux quiz or a SuSE quiz? If it’s Linux, why include SuSE-specific commands and not commands specific to some other distros?

I guess the quiz also try to identify linux fans. Those who like to read about linux history and its evolution, no just for sys admins who happens to run linux systems.

I used to like read about linux history and the like back in the time I used linux. Kernel architecture flame-wars, cool articles about how the new file system works, the distro of the day, and all that fun stuff. Then I grew up and I became a boring person and I didn’t care anymore.

There is nothing wrong with deleting a log file of an active process. That is bullshit. I think however wrote this is supersticious. Posix filesystem handle quite well deleting files in use, they are not freed right away which is why you need to HUP the processes using them, but that is all.